Minor Annoyances

Sometimes little things bother me. This blog post is about some of the minor annoyances I have struggled with in the last few days. I guess “struggled with” is uncessessarily aggrandizing, so let’s replace that with “noticed”, since rather than calling out to the heavens and the spirits of my ancestors in anguish, it’s mostly limited to having a one-sided rant at Caitlin about it.

For example, take this ad for Tracfone (some sort of discount cellular carrier I think — I don’t know anything about them other than they ran an ad — the one below — in Star magazine which I assure you was not mine and I have no idea how I came to be reading it). The thing that bugged me was that in the small-legal-text of the ad (and also on some of their websites) it says “the stylized spiral is [a] registered trademarks of TracFone Wireless, Inc”. Argh! Three concentric circles are not at all the same thing as a spiral, not visually and not conceptually! I could go on and on about the subtleties of mixing them up, but either you’re a person who doesn’t care and I’m boring you, or you’re a person who does care, and you’re already having those thoughts without my seeding, and again, I’m boring you.

Along the same lines, I was looking at an article about the pink katydid, and it said something that struck me as a bit odd — “the pink katydid is so rare that they occur once out of every 500 individuals. You have a better chance of spotting a unicorn in the wild. I get that writers are not usually accomplished statisticians, but come on — I’m sure that the odds of spotting a unicorn in the wild are much lower than one in five hundred. Maybe their humor is going over my head.

Earlier today I was [half] watching [half sleeping through] the 1916 silent version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, excerpted in Dive! Dive! Dive!, a documentary about submarine movies, and in it Captain Nemo is an even more exotic character with a sort of a theosophical society look about him. The thing that caught my eye was the odd piercings that Nemo has. They’re not earrings, but surface piercings on his neck. The capture here is not very good, sorry, but there are plenty of shots of it in the movie and I’m pretty sure it is supposed to be a neck piercing, not just a poorly done prosthetic earring.

The annoyance in this one is that I don’t have a body modification blog to post much more on this to, and worse yet, that with ModBlog these days being virtually un-updated and not particularly interesting when it is, there isn’t even anyone that I can send leads to, which sucks because I’d love to have an interesting body modification blog to read daily and I just don’t see one out there — although there are tons of great tattoo blogs these days, just not something that is similar to the first-generation of ModBlog — and I have (almost exactly) two more years before I could run such a blog.

Other than that, oooooh, Survivor, letting me down again. Just like I said last time, RUSSELL WAS ROBBED! (and I know, for the second time I’m farfromtheonlyperson who feels this way. Jeff Probst, writing on his ride home after wrapping the season, has some interesting comments on Russell, but for me it’s really heartbreaking watching him lose, because you can tell that he really can’t understand why he doesn’t win, and why people after the game don’t love him. As a big fan of the game, I think he feels really personally hurt to be “rejected” by the players he looks up to, and that it’s emotionally very hard for him. And I have to admit, that as a big fan of the game and a big fan of the way he played, I really feel for him and have a lot of resentment to the vindictive juries that insulted the game with their actions and blocked a superior player from getting the money. Or maybe, like Russell, I just don’t get it… I’m sure he’ll play another season, and like he said, having played back to back he really did essentially play a single time only, so I wonder how that will go after he’s had time to reflect on his strategy.

It’s insane that people are so domineering that there are legal ramifications to even writing about body modification. I was wondering why an initial search turned about little. Started reading a few a weeks ago after somebody posted your painting “Cold-Water Extraction” on Reddit and have really enjoy the blog. I have an eccentric 4 y/o son and respect the way you’re raising your child and can relate a lot. Any suggestions on a good tattoo blog to read? Love the work of yours I’ve seen.

I can’t wait until you’re allowed to have a bodymod blog again! I just got a new tattoo and was bummed that I didn’t really have anywhere to send it, aside from posting it on my Flickr account. (I was tempted to email you anyway but decided that’d probably come across a little weird since I don’t actually know you.)

Well, all I can say is for the next two years I will be impatiently anticipating a new mod-blog! I was looking through it yesterday and found a post from Rachel, I think, that explained that most of the content was too hard/extreme and from that point on they will stop posting modifications of this sort. Then I decided to look through just your posts Shannon, funnily enough only a minority of them were extreme, most of them were just observations of interesting or beautiful pieces or photos. I will wait for as long as it takes to get you writing about this stuff again :D

Pink is a colour morph of the katydid… you don’t see them very often because predators can get them a lot more easier. Im not a fan of insect summaries written by non entomologists, people just don’t know what they’re talking about.

I’ve been waiting to hear what you had to say about Russel. I, too, feel that he was completely robbed. I can’t believe that those people, who played the game so many times, couldn’t get over their personal feelings and give credit where credit is due. I also really felt sorry for him at the end. You could see how upset he was. Arrg the whole thing was so frustrating that I can’t really articulate all the things wrong with it. I did tell Cohen that if he didn’t win, I would never watch again. Somehow I doubt that, but I sure was mad.

About the pink katydid: As an entomologist, I notice bugs everywhere I go. I’m normally looking for spiders, centipedes, and millipedes, though. That said, I run into those pink katydids all the time. You nailed it. There are hundreds of millions of them out there, so they’re actually pretty common.

Two years seems so long, but i’m sure it will be here in no time. I look forward to a new BodyMod Blog. As for the registered trademark thing; Not only were you reading Star magazine (not something I am familiar with here i Australia), but you were reading the legal text in the Ads….it seems like you have a shortage of reading material if this is what you are resorting to for prose.

Anyone have access to an original 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with the original illustrations? I bet that piercing matches the original illustration and the illustration was just drawn in a way that the earring missed the ear.

I personally enjoy watching Russell, but feel he got what was coming to him. He has no concept of the end-game. You have to play in such a way that you inspire people to rally behind you. Juries are vindictive on Survivor and that’s part of the game. Russell is definitely cunning, but he has neither tact nor decent people skills. If, at the final jury, his personality changed and it had all been an act of some sort, maybe to get people to bring him to the final three, and he was somewhat apologetic for being an outright ass… well, I’d have been pretty impressed, and I think he would have won.

I checked modblog the other day out of morbid curiosity, obviously I was disappointed. Don’t think I’ve been back more than twice since everything went down. I know I’m eagerly awaiting whatever comes next.